Norwegian Encore Alaska Cruise Review: Day 2 – Portlandfeatured
(Ed note: This is a cruise we took in 2022 so keep that in mind for any references to COVID protocols! Better late than never, right?)
Working a job that’s (mostly) remote had it’s perks, and at the top of the list was the ability to work from just about anywhere. My job offered unlimited PTO, and I never wanted to be that girl who took too much. But even though I could work from (almost) anywhere, I had a love/hate relationship with working from the West Coast.
On the plus, my work day ended very early, but on the minus, I was managing a global team with half of my direct reports in Europe, so my days often started early, and when I was on the West Coast, they started two hours earlier than the did at home.
So on our first full day in Portland, my day started bright and early at 6:00 AM. Our room was big enough to allow for me to have my own little working area, but 6:00 AM alarms? They’re brutal! The hotel offered a complimentary continental breakfast with coffee, juices, all types of breads and bagels, cereal, fruit, hard boiled eggs, cheese and locally-made Tillamook yogurt — nothing fancy but perfectly good for a quick bite before the day starts!
My calls took me until about 9:00 AM and everything else, I could take from my phone, so we started getting ready for our day. Before we left, though, we both wanted to knock out our pre-cruise Covid tests. Even though we were fully vaccinated, because our itinerary included a stop in Canada (a stop that was under four hours, for the record), we still had to take a pre-embarkation test. Thankfully, we had plenty of eMed tests leftover from when we came home from our Europe cruise in June and we did the quick self-proctored test in our hotel room before we started our day.
I keep a Google list of just about every place I love or would want to visit in every city we go to. They’re chock full to the brim with reccos I find on Instagram or TikTok, places people tell me about, places I’ve been and I love, even cool places we just drive past. My Portland list is one of the longer ones — Portland is one of the greatest food cities in the USA — and we knew we had plenty of options of things to do and places to see while we were here. It was a brilliantly sunny day — a rarity for our trips out to the PNW — so we decided to start at Multnomah Falls.
You may not know it by name, but if you see a picture, you know Multnomah Falls. It’s one of the tallest waterfalls in the United States and certainly one of the most beautiful! We visited on one of our Fall Foliage trips in 2017 or 2018, but it was rainy while we were there. It was enchanting in the rain, but I’ve often found in the haste to spend as little time as possible in the rain, we miss things, so we really wanted to see it in the sunlight. It was a bit of a trek from the parking lot to the falls (you have to go through an underpass and up a bit of an incline to get to the first viewing area). There are cafes, a shop and bathrooms on the other side of the underpass, so anything you could need to visit is already there. It was crowded and buzzing when we got up to the falls, but it was spectacular. This waterfall is truly larger than life and watching the water cascade from the tippy top, down the side of this gorge, was simply mesmerizing. Many people start at the base of the waterfall and then hike up to the viewing bridge, but we were content to observe its beauty from where we were.
After Multnomah Falls, we grabbed some Diet Cokes at McDonalds and I hopped onto a Zoom call that was scheduled for 30 minutes and went over an hour. I tell ya — love/hate relationship with remote work! While I was on my call, Stephanie drove us over towards Laurelhurst Park, which is really one of my favorite areas in Portland because there’s SO much there. We were hoping to start at our favorite snack shop, Cheese and Crack, but while they survived the pandemic, their full-day operating hours did not and they now opened at 3:00 PM during the week. So we altered our plans a bit and drove to another stop on our list, Straightaway’s tasting room.
Straightaway makes canned craft cocktails, and they have a tasting room where they serve these gorgeous flights that pair their concoctions with different snacks in Portland. Mid-day on a Friday wasn’t too crazy, but if their Instagram geotag is any indication, it’s a very popular gathering spot. The staff were incredibly friendly, offering up suggestions for both our orders and Portland in general, and walking us through the pairings. Because Stephanie was driving, we started off with one Spritz flight to share and it was so good that we ordered a second cocktail flight so we could taste more of their libations. The portions were perfect, the snacks paired perfectly with each cocktail and the portions offered small tastes, which worked perfectly for us since we were just looking to taste! Straightaway’s tasting room also offers a menu of locally-made sausages and hot dogs, so we split a bratwurst. I’ve only had brats in Wisconsin and Germany (where they take bratwurst very seriously!) and this one offered a different spin with different herbs and flavors (like dill!) that we really enjoyed.
Nearby was the Hawthorne Asylum Food Carts, so we walked over to those after we left Straightaway. Food trucks are a big part of Portland’s culture and you’ll find food truck parks peppered in across the city map. The Hawthorn Asylum park is in an old container park and was filled with locals having lunch, so we figured it had to be good! There was a wide variety of trucks offering international fare from Mexican tortas and tacos to Sushi burritos, bubble teas, Belgian waffle sandwiches, Thai food, Indian food, Middle Eastern food, Japanese food, there was even a Slavic food truck! Steph got a chicken gyro, I ordered bibimbap and we grabbed seats at a communal area around the fire pit. The food was incredible (and really inexpensive — my bibimbap with beef bulgogi was like $12 and it was filled with so many fresh veggies!).
We walked around for a bit after our lunch and cocktails and decided to drive over to a jewelry boutique Stephanie wanted to check out. We drove around the area, snapping pictures of the different murals we found and noting new places we wanted to visit. Portland can be a bit gritty and the challenges they face within their homeless population are evident when you drive through the city, but it’s also a city filled with natural beauty, social activism and something to enjoy for just about everyone.
When 3:00 hit, we drove over to Cheese and Crack to get our fix of, well, cheese and crackers. I swear, every time we visit, I re-contemplate my life plans and whether or not I could make a living making cheese plates. What a life that would be!
There were some errands we had to run before we got on the ship, so we headed out to the nearest Target. We picked up all of our toiletries (we always buy right before we cruise so we can avoid packing them!) and some snacks and drinks for the hotel room. We made the mistake of browsing the clothing section and contemplated all of the choices we made packing for this trip. I swear, one of these days, we’ll get the packing thing down!
For dinner, we kept it simple — we went to Baja Fresh. Baja Fresh was, like, the food of my college years. It got me through some tough nights and many hangovers. And we don’t have Baja Fresh anymore in Illinois, so it’s practically a treat when we can find it when we travel!
And because we were on vacation and on vacation, dessert is a given, we stopped at Salt and Straw, a local ice cream chain known for their innovative flavors. You can sample just about anything so, of course, I had to try the wildest flavors they had. Spiced Goat Cheese Pumpkin Pie? 5/5. Spinach Cake with Chocolate Tahini Fudge? Wouldn’t rank it near the top of my list. Salt and Straw was every bit as good as advertised
We headed back to the hotel and did a little of our re-packing early since we had such big plans for the next day. I shut down my laptop, ready to spend the next week thinking about whales and glaciers and anything but work and we went to bed early, ready for an early start for our big day driving down the coast!
